Processes and plants for automatic manufacturing of Middle-European types of bread are known in many variations. As a rule, they are basically constituted of a dough portioning machine, a kneader, diverse dough working arrangements, a fermentation housing and finally a baking oven.
These plants are not suited, without modification, for the automatic working a processing of the dough necessary for Arabic flat bread. The latter has a relatively high water content (100 kg. flour need 70 to 75 l. water), and the handling and treatment of the flat-formed dough becomes problematic.
Particularly problematic is the storage and transportation of the flat shaped dough pieces in the final fermentation housing. Due to their shape, the dough pieces cannot be laid on conventional hangers. The latter are replaced by serpentine guided conveyor belts. However, at the end of each such belt the dough pieces are turned over in the process of being delivered to the start of the lower lying belt. Such method of processing cannot be practiced for two reasons. On the one hand the above-mentioned high water consistency causes a stretching of the dough cuts in the direction of transport at every turnover point. This is undesirable due to the necessity of circular flats. On the other hand, such method of handling would result in flat bread with identical lower and upper surfaces. This is not characteristic of Arabic flat bread and is undesirable.
This drawback might in principle be avoidable by providing, at the end of each belt, an uptake arrangement to carefully receive the dough pieces and deliver them to the lower belt without turning them over but having 20 band belt sections stacked one on top of the other would require 20 such uptake arrangements. This would be an extraordinary complexity causing frequent breakdown and repair.